The portable 3D printer that fits in a briefcase

Two MIT students created an ultra-compact machine with a detachable head.

A pair of MIT mechanical engineering students has developed the first truly portable 3D printer, which fits neatly into a metal briefcase.

PopFab—designed by MIT CADLab's Ilan Moyer and Nadya Peek of MIT's Centre for Bits and Atoms—can impressively be set up in just a few moments. In the embedded video you can see the students pull out a retractable arm, fix it in place, then connect up a laptop, along with the printing head and attached material source. The pair then sit back and watch the device spring into action, etching out the fish design being fed to it by the laptop.

The detachable printer head not only makes the machine compact in design, but means it can also be used in a variety of different ways. By swapping in different toolheads, it can be turned into a vinyl cutting, milling, or programmable drawing machine.

Moyer has been working toward the creation of PopFab for some time. In 2009 he completed a challenge to build a basic 3D printer for under £60 with widely available materials. The idea was to see whether someone without engineering training and with standard supplies could create a 3D printer over just one weekend.

Though his medium was chocolate pudding and ketchup, Moyer did succeed in creating something that could be described as a 3D printer. The neat and compact device that became PopFab is actually an incarnation of the low-cost "personal fabrication machine" project Moyer began working on the same year. Though, just how cost-effective the current model is remains to be seen—it has no price tag yet, and the MIT students have not spoken about whether they plan on making it commercially available.

If it does indeed appear on the market, the possibilities for at-home and on-the-go printing could be interesting.

It's only a matter of time before "3D printers" are made illegal or require a license to operate.

Only question is what reason. drugs, weapons, IP?

It's pretty obvious these devices can be used to produce items that have been patented and copyrighted, to produce illegal firearms and drug manufacturing equipment. In the future there will be illegal stuff, like a furniture that you made yourself (and is a good reason to put you in a jail for rest of your life) and licensed, legal stuff - the items you are allowed to use until your subscription expires.

It's only a matter of time before "3D printers" are made illegal or require a license to operate.

Only question is what reason. drugs, weapons, IP?

It's pretty obvious these devices can be used to produce items that have been patented and copyrighted, to produce illegal firearms and drug manufacturing equipment. In the future there will be illegal stuff, like a furniture that you made yourself (and is a good reason to put you in a jail for rest of your life) and licensed, legal stuff - the items you are allowed to use until your subscription expires.

It's pretty obvious these devices can be used to produce items that have been patented and copyrighted, to produce illegal firearms and drug manufacturing equipment. In the future there will be illegal stuff, like a furniture that you made yourself (and is a good reason to put you in a jail for rest of your life) and licensed, legal stuff - the items you are allowed to use until your subscription expires.

Nah. In the future you'll be able to print anything you want copyrighted, patented, or not. Before leaving for work you'll have just enough blood taken from you each day to make sure you're tired enough not to bother. The corporations will extract the iron from the blood they collect to build the machines they control us with.

It's only a matter of time before "3D printers" are made illegal or require a license to operate.

You can make them illegal, it won't stop them from spreading. Like file-sharing.

Akemi wrote:

Can't wait for the patent wars over this.

The patent on the 3D printing process most machine use (fused-filament deposition) have expired in the 2010's and that's why we see an explosion of new projects, designs and companies. And every innovation made on an open-hardware project is widely published, thus considered "state of the art", and as such unpatentable.

If you mean "wars" as consequences of those machines being able to print patented design/systems without paying royalties, well, tough shit. A file is a file. You can patent or copyright a bunch of bytes but it simply doesn't matter.

PopFab—designed by MIT CADLab's Ilan Moyer and Nadya Peek of MIT's Centre for Bits and Atoms—can impressively be set up in just a few moments.

Given the large number of cuts during the setup in the video, I honestly have no idea whether it took 2 minutes or 20 to set up.

Given the structure of the device and their use of handscrews, I'm pretty confident that the setup time is reasonably short.Booting the computer and waiting for the printbed to reach the proper temperature (this printer might not use a heated printbed, IDK) takes probably much longer than the mechanical deployment.

now what we need is a self calibrating low cost 3d printerthat adjusts its own calibration as it goes and doesn't need recalibrating half way through a print

IMO, the usual community is working against itself in that objective. It seems mostly focused on the ability to make DIY boot-strappable (probably not a real word) models rather than a low-cost model for wider adoption, because to achieve the cost requirements would probably involve using traditional manufacturing.

A traditionally manufactured, mass-produced 'Model T' 3D printer would do more to spur innovation than the current crop of bespoke hobbyists toys.

PopFab—designed by MIT CADLab's Ilan Moyer and Nadya Peek of MIT's Centre for Bits and Atoms—can impressively be set up in just a few moments.

Given the large number of cuts during the setup in the video, I honestly have no idea whether it took 2 minutes or 20 to set up.

Not to mention it apparently requires two people to setup in moments. Given the video.

I agree with the very first commenter. Ben Heck's portable printer looks much better and quicker to setup. The one upside that the MIT version has is it seems to not require a footprint larger than the case.

He didn't make a gun. He made a trigger mechanism for an already existing gun. It's going to be a while before 3D printers can make high-stress parts like gun barrels. Or an engine block for your new car.

I know almost nothing about these, but am pretty sure looking at the design that they require an electrical outlet for power... The battery that'd be necessarily for that sort of heat generation over the period of time necessary means that using one of these on a plane, or anywhere remote (think middle of the desert) is pretty unlikely.

He didn't make a gun. He made a trigger mechanism for an already existing gun. It's going to be a while before 3D printers can make high-stress parts like gun barrels. Or an engine block for your new car.

Correction: Barring new wondrous materials, it is impossible.

3D printing is neat for widgets and other low-stressed components. It is also awesome for generating molding/casting forms. It is useless for producing components that will actually need to carry any appreciable stress or wear.

I know almost nothing about these, but am pretty sure looking at the design that they require an electrical outlet for power...

The power requirement is actually very reasonable given the fact that none of the design I know of have been optimized for power efficiency.

The electronics itself is very lower power (small microcontroller, less than a Watt), the 3 to 5 motors consume probably around 10W each, less on average, all you need then is to keep the "hot end" at a temperature from 190 to 210°C. That hot-end is generally 5 to 10 cubic centimeter of aluminum, with some kind of thermal insulation, so tens of Watt max.Overall such devices could be powered for a couple of hours on a laptop battery if you're using PLA.

To print with ABS, the hot-end should be heated to 240-250°C and a heated printing surface (requiring more than 100W) is necessary for big objects, so that's less power efficient.

I don't get it. how does a fabricator like this make a downward-facing concave surface? Can it?

Yes it can.Due to the stickiness and viscosity of the material, printing overhang structure is possible if you keep the angle bellow a limit.

If you need overhang structure with a bigger angle, you can simply add support structures to your object (manually, or let the software do that for you) that will be removed after the object is printed.

Support structures are printed with a very low plastic density and are easy to break off from the object. Professional printer use 2 different plastics, one as structural material and the other as support material, but they required a heated bath of caustic solution to dissolve the support plastic (yay toxic wastes) so the DIY solution is actually way more elegant.

He didn't make a gun. He made a trigger mechanism for an already existing gun. It's going to be a while before 3D printers can make high-stress parts like gun barrels. Or an engine block for your new car.

He didn't make a gun. He made a trigger mechanism for an already existing gun. It's going to be a while before 3D printers can make high-stress parts like gun barrels. Or an engine block for your new car.

Sure, it is far from portable. And it requires one hefty power supply, but one can still wonder.

I expect security checkpoints will be looking for 3D printers, and block you from bringing them on board, long before manufacturing a weapon on board is feasible. At the size of a briefcase (or even much smaller), you can't sneak it past security. So then it's just a matter of them knowing what to watch out for.

You'd have better luck bringing aboard the components of the gun itself disguised as part of something else, then just assembling those on the plane.*

3D printing is neat for widgets and other low-stressed components. It is also awesome for generating molding/casting forms. It is useless for producing components that will actually need to carry any appreciable stress or wear.

Sorry you are wrong.printing ceramics or metals (powder or slurry) followed by laser sintering isn't hard just expensiveand not currently portable.

Plane will have landed and passengers disembarked before you'll have your weapon.

because im sure additive printing technology will not print any faster in our lifetime

Assuming by additive you mean FDM, increases in speed come largely at the cost of precision and accuracy. While I am sure we can double the speed a couple rounds while increasing precision / resolution from current machines, we're not too far from reasonable limits with the technology.

FDM style technology could get a huge boost from migrating from liquid pool / ejection techniques which make it similar to inkjet printing to some kind of laser printer style powder & drum technique (laser printers are already FDM printers, they essentially melt a form of plastic onto paper). This would probably be far enough from nozzle printing to become it's own variant of FDM. Losses in volume of deposition due to small powder particulate size would be offset by building layer at a time in a fixed fashion rather than piece complexity and size dictating the time per layer.

Now, SLA on the other hand, can just keep getting cheaper, faster, and vastly more precise all at the same time. Nobody in the enthusiast crowd has tried using a 4k DLP yet, but such technology only gets cheaper. Look at what a conventional 1080p DLP can do: http://3dhomemade.blogspot.com/ Also, with SLA style printing, the machine can be made smaller and lighter with an LCD panel instead of DLP projector and with 1/4th the moving parts, only moving up the Z-axis. I placed much longer commentary regarding all of this at /. back on Friday. A briefcase sized SLA printer could pretty much make parts several inches tall at 90% of the area of the containing briefcase given sufficient resin supplies.

He didn't make a gun. He made a trigger mechanism for an already existing gun. It's going to be a while before 3D printers can make high-stress parts like gun barrels. Or an engine block for your new car.

Sure, it is far from portable. And it requires one hefty power supply, but one can still wonder.

I expect security checkpoints will be looking for 3D printers, and block you from bringing them on board, long before manufacturing a weapon on board is feasible. At the size of a briefcase (or even much smaller), you can't sneak it past security. So then it's just a matter of them knowing what to watch out for.

You'd have better luck bringing aboard the components of the gun itself disguised as part of something else, then just assembling those on the plane.*

* You did not read about that here!

So much silliness. A standard Bic pen fits perfectly around a .22 round. The removed nib is functional as a firing pin.

Also, certain refillable butane lighters can have their diaphragm opened sufficiently with a sewing needle to project a 12" flame. Some will last a solid minute at this range. People are surprisingly afraid of fire pointed in their face.

Not sure about current regulations regarding lighters, but I'm pretty hopeful someone in the TSA would notice .22 rounds in your baggage.

There are lots of other what-ifs to pose for concealable weapons, but the reality is that your behavior at the gate is usually what tips the TSA or similar off. Same goes for drug smuggling. The whole, you can print a weapon is fairly inconsequential next to all the things a calm, trained expert can smuggle on board given sufficient motivation.

I don't get it. how does a fabricator like this make a downward-facing concave surface? Can it?

Yes it can.Due to the stickiness and viscosity of the material, printing overhang structure is possible if you keep the angle bellow a limit.

If you need overhang structure with a bigger angle, you can simply add support structures to your object (manually, or let the software do that for you) that will be removed after the object is printed.

Support structures are printed with a very low plastic density and are easy to break off from the object. Professional printer use 2 different plastics, one as structural material and the other as support material, but they required a heated bath of caustic solution to dissolve the support plastic (yay toxic wastes) so the DIY solution is actually way more elegant.